Salsa maker is resurrecting father’s recipes from 1960s-era Modesto restaurant

The son of a Modesto restaurateur is using his father’s old recipes to reintroduce a salsa that has not been served for over three decades.

Senor Campos Salsa is the namesake of a string of Mexican restaurants established by the late Art Campos, of Modesto, across the Central Valley in 1964. Campos’ son, Stephen Campos, was in charge of operations at the Senor Campos restaurants and held onto its recipes.

While Art Campos made and sold a variety of Mexican food, “his delicious salsa and crunchy tortilla chips were everyone’s favorite,” Stephen Campos said.

After the restaurants closed in 1991, Stephen Campos would make the salsa for family and friends. After years of high praise from them, he decided to officially resurrect Senor Campos Salsa in 2018. He created a website and started mailing his salsa across the United States.

“This salsa is made from my heart as a way to honor my father, who was a pioneer in the Mexican food industry,” said Stephen Campos, who is 76 and has been living in Arizona since 2008. “We use the same recipe that was served at all Senor Campos restaurants in the 1960s.”

He has since added spices to his product menu, including meat rubs, taco seasoning and restaurant-style tortilla chips. He’s also created salsa flavors that aren’t original to his father’s restaurants, like chipotle barbecue and ghost pepper.

In March, Stephen Campos approached Bill O’Brien to see if he would be willing to sell Senor Campos Salsa at O’Brien’s Market, to which the answer was yes.

Art Campos sold his corn and flour tortillas at O’Brien’s for years when it was owned by Chuck O’Brien, Stephen Campos said.

“I went to high school with some of the O’Briens,” he said. “I consider their stores to be a perfect fit for Senor Campos Salsa.”

Senor Campos Salsa will launch at the store on Friday. It will be available at both the 839 W. Roseburg Ave. and the 4120 Dale Road locations.

The store will carry the original recipe salsa that was served at the Senor Campos restaurants, a green chile verde salsa made from cactus and a raspberry chipotle salsa. Hot sauces in green chile, habanero and cayenne flavors will also be sold.

Salsa with a side of history

Art Campos was born on his father’s cattle ranch in Los Mochis — a small farm town in southern Mexico — in 1913, during the Mexican Revolution.

His family lived in fear during pillaging raids, according to Modesto Bee archives, and “his father lost everything.”

“My mother said she took me as a baby to hide in the hills for days at a time to keep me from being killed,” Art Campos told The Bee in May 1983.

The family came to the United States through Nogales, Arizona, in 1919 after his father was conscripted by the Southern Pacific Railroad Co. They moved on to Ogden, Utah, where they lived in a boxcar for around six months until the railroad was about done being built.

A number of moves, a UC Berkeley degree, a teaching credential, Naval service and a failed business partnership later, Art Campos landed in Modesto in 1947 with the 500-pound corn grinder he got out of the dissolution of his partnership.

He taught one semester of Spanish at Modesto High School before teaming up with his brother, Raymond Campos of Newman, to establish Campos Foods in a Quonset hut behind Modesto Junior College — making and selling corn chips.

After three years in partnership with the Crispie Potato Chip Co. of Stockton, the company told the brothers it had found another supplier in Southern California and didn’t need their corn chips anymore, according to archives.

Raymond Campos dropped out of the business, while Art Campos tried to keep it going and market the chips on his own, to no avail.

“A young woman working for me suggested I make tortillas instead, and when I said I didn’t know how, she insisted it was easy and she’d teach me,” he told The Bee in 1983.

Art Campos became Stanislaus County’s first commercial tortilla maker, still under the name Campos Foods, distributing to grocery stores from Fresno to Sacramento and the Bay Area to the foothills.

Stephen Campos started working with his father at Campos Foods at the age of 14.

In 1951, the business was moved to 1341 Coldwell Ave., where Art Campos opened a fast-food operation at the front of the tortilla manufacturing plant under the Campos Foods name.

In the mid-1960s, Art Campos also founded a chain of six restaurants between Turlock and Chico called Senor Campos. At the time, however, the restaurants were undercapitalized and he decided to sell, one by one.

The last restaurant of the Senor Campos restaurants was sold in 1975, while the fast-food spot in front of his plant remained.

Art Campos reopened at least one Senor Campos restaurant in Ceres in 1984, archives show.

Stephen Campos continued to work at Campos Foods after returning from the Vietnam War, delivering tortillas and operating Senor Campos restaurants.

In 1991, Art Campos sold the business and Stephen Campos started working in the insurance industry, where he still works full time. Art Campos died in 1995.

Stephen Campos said his upbringing and impression of his father’s business never left him, thus, he resurrected Senor Campos Salsa.